Just Another Day
by Emmi.Hayes
Summary: It's just another day on the calander, so it should just be another day. But that's not always the case and so maybe it's okay if Natasha steps in to give Barton a shoulder to lean on, since Phil can't anymore. Bowtie, SPOILERS for the movie, angst all the way.


**Notes: **This is slash, and there is language and angst and drinking and bad coping skills all around. If it offends you, don't read! A friend sent be a lovely text today reminding me just what today was and I got all sad and wrote this, so there isn't a lot of plot to it, and there was no beta that looked over it.

He would have been 48.

To any and all Bowtie fans.

**Just Another Day**

It wasn't odd for Clint to go for a run when he woke up. He didn't sleep much, it was just another day. After five miles on the treadmill he wandered up to the kitchen, found it deserted, and Jarvis didn't bother him as he grabbed a bagel before heading out the door into another dark morning. He would shower at SHIELD.

He kept his face down, hidden under a ball cap for a subway ride across the city. People didn't get overly close; he was still drenched in sweat. Just another day in the life of the Amazing Hawkeye.

The range won out over a shower in the end. His fingers had held a nervous twitch in them all morning, which was nothing new, and he needed to hold the bow, needed to draw the line taught, needed to feel the weight and the balance, needed to have a target. Hawkeye needed something to shoot, just like any other day.

It took fifteen minutes to let the first arrow fly. He'd had the shot before he even reached for the arrow, but he held, working his mind over every possibility the paper target was incapable of actually fulfilling. The first started a chain of easy shots. Clint glided across the range, slow and lazy, arrow after arrow striking the mark. And then there was only one arrow left. He held it for a long time. He breathed, stared down the target with dizzying focus, and saw the white of a green eye.

He waited, like any other day. When his arms began to no longer ache, but burn, he let the arrow fly without blinking. He was leaving before it hit the red of the paper. He pretended he didn't see Natasha's unreadable face in passing. He had never let the disapproving look give him pause, why start today?

He didn't feel like sitting still just yet. He felt like sparing, but like so often, he didn't feel like dealing with the junior agents it would require interacting with to spar. So he found a treadmill and ran for a few miles. Or many miles. He didn't know, Clint rarely kept track. He stopped when his legs screamed at him, and when his stomach pushed his bagel back up.

Throwing up wasn't fun, and was not an everyday occurrence, so he wandered off to the showers and let the heat ease his bitching muscles. They cried for him, and he took a perverse sense of relief in the burn.

Eventually he dried off and found some clothes, and decided he needed to be still. He went to the place he spent so much time being still in, a place that wasn't a roof top, or a strange window, or a surprisingly comfortable couch. It was easy to slip into the empty office, he still had a key, and climb up into the duct work. He leaned back against the metal and let it support him. There was a bottle of something cheap and cruel beside him, stashed for all the days he needed it and a coffee cup that had been used to many times.

Today was a little different though.

After about five hours of being curled in the same position with the bottle that only had about a coffee cup of liquor missing, the vent opened up. It wasn't some junior agent that had wronged a senior agent trying to shoo him out of his hidey hole, or a senior agent bitching at him. It was the one person that would sometimes sit with him, possibly his best friend. He had loved her, once, and like any other day, he loved her still.

They sat together in silence for a long time, just listening to the rumbling of the building around them and the sound of each other's breathing. Finally, gently, Natasha sat a clear bottle down beside him saying, "I thought you might want this. It's peach." And God, wasn't she a life saver? Peach Vodka? Fuck yes.

"Mm, Nat, no need to bring out the good stuff for me," Clint murmured and gave her a half lidded glance that was dark and dirty. They both heard the _thanks, don't go yet _loud and clear, like any other day.

"You're spoiled." She leaned back, tilting her head to stare at him openly. "And a brat, but I encourage it anyway."

"Like any other day," Clint whispered, pouring the vodka into the coffee cup he had been clutching for nearly five hours. His hand hurt. He ignored it.

"Barton, it's not just another day." The words were sharp, and yeah, she was probably the only person in the whole fucking universe that he wouldn't punch for lecturing him about this. She felt what he felt, kind of.

"We were fighting, you know." It wasn't a question. It was a statement, like they had girl talk all the time, which was most certainly _not_ like any other day. They had never talked about this. "I was a reckless, selfish bastard like always and I pissed him off and was too proud to budge a little," he admitted in the stark silence. She didn't correct him, why lie?

"And then Loki—I didn't get to tell him how sorry I was. How wrong I was, like always. He was always right, y'know? Always. And fuck, I loved it as much as I hated it. And he was always so ready to forgive, when I finally decided to get my head out of my ass and admit I was wrong. "

"Clint," but what was she supposed to say that hadn't been said already? It wasn't his fault? Phil knew he wasn't to blame? Phil knew Clint loved him?

He didn't cry. He was a seasoned field agent of SHIELD. But his butt was numb and his back and legs and fingers screamed in pain, and his throat burned with every swig of the vodka and his head was pounding. It was close, right? The ghost of himself that he had slowly sunk into when the others weren't looking was like crying, wasn't it?

"No, Tasha. How, how am I supposed to take care of them? How? I don't know them! I've never met Emma, or Jason. I've never met his mom. How do I walk up to them and tell them I'm the guy who got Phil killed? I'm the guy who didn't talk to them at the funeral? I'm the guy who was so desperately addicted to him? I'm the guy he could never bring home, because look at me?"

Natasha finally reached out and put a hand on the back of his neck. "Hush, you're not helping." And she scratched at his hair line like she had done for years when missions were just too much, and the way she knew Phil had learnt from her. She didn't say anything when Clint's mouth fell open in a silent, ragged sob. His eyes were dry all the while.

"I have a nephew I've never met. I have a sister-in-law who doesn't know what I look like, or what my voice sounds like. A mother-in-law who doesn't even have a phone number to reach me at—"

"They know your name. And they know Coulson chose you, and that should tell them everything they should ever need to know about you," she said fiercely, and when she put it like that, how could he argue?

They fell silent for a while after that. Clint still clutched the _World's Best Babysitter _mug that wasn't his like a safety blanket.

"Come on, Barton," Natasha ground out as she slid out of the vent. She poked her head back into the duct and gave him a look, and even today he didn't feel shitty enough or ballsy enough to defy it.

"Where are we going?" he asked as he grabbed his stuff and followed her. He stood in the dark office with the familiar couch and the familiar desk and the dying plant, and the dog tags and gold band strung around his neck felt heavy against his sternum.

"Baby, it's July eighth, and there's a party we're should be getting drunk at right now at the tower," Natasha said and her smirk was a little too sad at the edges, but like any other day he was the only one who would be able to tell.

"Shame he couldn't be there, Captain America's finally showing up for his birthday," and if his laugh was a little bitter and raw, well Natasha wouldn't tell.

"And I hear he's trying to get drunk, too," and Natasha said it like a promise that made Clint smile.

So July eighth wasn't just any other day, and maybe it killed Clint a little to not nag at Phil about being only two years away from fifty, _you old man_. But tomorrow was another day, and another was after that. He might be hung over for more than a few of them, and he would never hear that soft, knowing voice in his ear asking him to talk again, but it would get better in bits and pieces, right?


End file.
